


Welcome to the Night Shift

by weepingalpacafuneral



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil misses his boyfriend, Cecil uses his radio show to ask for relationship advice, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, relationship troubles, technically not canon compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 17:03:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16999026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingalpacafuneral/pseuds/weepingalpacafuneral
Summary: This is a re-imagining of the time Carlos is stuck in the Strange Desert Other World.  Cecil and Carlos are working out the details of a long distance relationship, and Cecil uses his newly appointed position as the host of the night shift at the Night Vale Radio Station to voice his story, and also every other Night Vale resident's story (just at night).





	Welcome to the Night Shift

**Author's Note:**

> This is not technically canon compliant, but it doesn't diverge from canon that much either. This is more of a re-imaging of the time that Carlos spent in the Strange Desert Other World from the point of view of Cecil, with a focus on the relationship between them.
> 
>  
> 
> This is my first piece of Welcome to Night Vale fanfiction, and I'd be grateful for feedback and constructive criticism.

**Cecil:** Hello, listeners. I don’t normally host the parts of the show that occur when most of Night Vale is asleep, or pretending to be asleep, but Station Management needed someone to take the night shift. So here I am! 

_A beat of dejected silence. Cecil’s enthusiasm? Faked._

**Cecil:** I must confess, I’m not entirely sure what to say. Normally, there’s a memo or a press release or a bloody piece of animal skin detailing the news, or some sort of event happening around town that I can report on through coincidence or luck or telepathy. Normally, I say “Welcome to Night Vale”. We are already in Night Vale. We know that we are here, that we are home from the long busy day in the vast desert and that we are settling in for the long quiet night in the vast desert. 

**Cecil:** It’s quiet at night.

_Cecil sighs. He has to fill the air time somehow._

**Cecil:** At night we don’t acknowledge the things that happen in Night Vale. Night Vale is quiet at night, at least for me. At night, there are no inter-dimensional portals or pterodactyls from said inter-dimensional portals popping up. No giant pyramids or glow clouds, no malicious greater power come to enslave us. 

**Cecil:** The desert lets us sleep at night.

**Cecil:** Or at least this particular night.

_Another beat of silence. Cecil shuffles paper around, even though both he and the listener know that he does not have notes or a topic prepared._

**Cecil:** It’s funny, really. I don’t have notes or a topic prepared, but I still have paper to shuffle around during and uncomfortable silence. I know that I know that I don’t have notes or a topic prepared. I know you know I don’t have notes or a topic prepared.

_Cecil sighs, and looks at the papers which are not notes or a topic but look an awful lot like notes and or topics._

**Cecil:** These are the papers for the notes and topics about the goings on around town today. 

**Cecil:** Or rather, yesterday. It’s 12:07 already, I don’t know how I missed the whispers of the tentacles that snake out from that one box in the corner filled with recording equipment. They tell me the time in their strange alien language that somehow shares numerals and a concept of universal change in the form of time.

_He fades off, sounding a bit bitter, but mostly lonely._

**Cecil:** Anyways.

**Cecil:** These notes appear to be the facts for the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner, and a couple press releases from Night Vale’s very own Director of Emergency Press Conferences. Mostly about that delectable sandwich place in the Barista District, and a really cute dog that was being walked on Main Street at 9:07 AM. The press releases, I mean. The Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner, as I’m sure you remember, was about the fluidity and impermanence of time. Our intern, Darnell, managed to broadcast that one photograph taken by the incredibly talented landscape photographer Salvador Dali over the radio! It was a wonderful addition to the already wonderful segment.

_Cecil’s enthusiasm dims noticeably after he finishes talking about the day before._

**Cecil:** I always tried to get Carlos to host the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.

**Cecil:** He never did. He kept saying that it would probably make Station Management angry and that I shouldn’t jeopardize my job like that and that he can’t talk on the radio anyways he gets nervous and no one here is interested in what he has to say anyways.

**Cecil:** When Carlos gets flustered he always talks in long, grammatically abominable sentences that frequently use the word “anyways”.

**Cecil:** Carlos always tells me that he isn’t an eloquent person and that I’m the one who has enough words for both of us.

**Cecil:** I say a lot of words every day. Some are better than others, just objectively, though they all have their own value. A lot of them get forgotten or misplaced or set on a shelf for later and never retrieved. Words are tricky things to find once you let them out into the world. I want to believe that they matter, especially the ones I intended to be the most important. I choose to believe that the people who received the words took my words into account and decided what my words meant, and still mean, to them. I can choose to believe this because I choose to say it, and put forth my idea out, out into great staggering immensity of the purple-y bluish black of Night Vale’s night sky. 

**Cecil:** I hope someone is listening, and assigning meaning to my words. It is not good or bad meaning; it is simply meaning, and it fills the emptiness of my night to know that someone cares enough to do such a simple thing.

**Cecil:** Good night, Night Vale. I will see you in the morning.


End file.
